"comes flinging forms"

(5x7)

Every once in a while I like to torment myself by trying to paint coconut palms. Some watercolorists do the most lovely paintings of lightstruck coconut palms with dancing shadows; full of all my favorite colors--blue, purple, orange, green ...
I get confused especially by all the overlapping fronds. I think it's a subject that is best approached from either end of the spectrum of technique: either very carefully with planning and assessment as you go or completely freely, with expressive abandon. It is not a subject for the middle way, which has always been my way.



This is an intermediate stage, which, if I had developed it a little differently, might have been a good place to stop.

Time to stop now for a Whiskey Smash (recipe below), after another Wallace Stevens poem.

Nomad Exquisite

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides
And gold sides of green sides,

And blessed mornings,
Meet for the eye of the young alligator,
And lightning colors
So, in me, comes flinging
Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.

Wallace Stevens

And, for Derby Day, from a segment on last night's Rachael Maddow Show on MSNBC:

WHISKEY SMASH*
*Dale DeGroff original

Ingredients:

1 1/2 ounces Maker's Mark Bourbon
1 ounce simple syrup
3 lemon pieces (cut a lemon in half and then quarter one of the halves, use three of the quarters)
5 mint leaves
Lemon wedge for garnish
1 mint sprig for garnish

Preparation:

Muddle the lemon pieces, mint leaves and simple syrup in the bottom of a Boston shaker glass. Add the bourbon and shake well with ice. Strain into a rocks glass with ice. Garnish with a mint sprig and a lemon wedge.

It's delicious--like a summer Manhattan, a Montauk, call it.
Mr. DeGroff's book, The Essential Cocktail, is available here.